I don't think that the act of running a pass-through, by itself, is scamming, as long as the pass-through details and risks were disclosed appropriately.
I disagree. Running a PPT was paying Pirate to make you and your investors the recipients of obviously fraudulent transfers of other people's money. If that's not scamming, what is? But as I've said elsewhere, I'm willing to give PPT operators who aren't on record as saying they knew or suspected it was a Ponzi a free pass this one time. But in the future, I will be holding people to a higher standard.
But if the investors knew going in that a pirate default meant a pass through default, how is the pass through operation scamming?